pastor before.
“Great…” She thought to herself. “Here I am in small town hell on Christmas Eve with Sheriff Sherlock, haunted houses, a cheap motel, no sleep, weird emails, and now an OCD preacher who’s stalking me. What did I do this year that was so bad?”
Out of curiosity she decided to press him on his last comment. “Well, since you seem to have an inside scoop on my thoughts, then why don’t you tell me what it is that I’m imagining.”
“As I said, not here,” he replied. “What we need to discuss is too sensitive.”
“I don’t see how saving my soul is all that sensitive, Pastor. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“I, however, have certain information…”
“Information…” Constance repeated the word, allowing the final syllable to linger and eventually become a question in its own right.
“Yes, information,” was all he said.
“Information about what?”
“Why you are here.”
She regarded him carefully for a moment, then dropped her voice another notch. “Are you telling me that you have information about the murders I’m investigating?”
For the first time since their conversation began, he raised his head. He cast a somewhat furtive look to the side, glanced quickly toward her, then returned his gaze to the coffee mug. “Yes. In a manner of speaking.”
“Well, either you do or you don’t,” she told him. “Which is it?”
He finally turned slowly and stared back at her, then said, “It’s somewhat complicated, Special Agent.”
She had to admit that now her curiosity was piqued even more. At the moment, she would certainly welcome a solid lead on this case that didn’t just create more questions, or have her hearing voices and drawing her weapon on errant snowflakes. However, something didn’t seem quite right about the man. The obvious OCD issues notwithstanding, there was something else definitely off-kilter with him, so she still wasn’t convinced that he didn’t have an ulterior motive in mind, and she couldn’t ignore that fact.
Of course, maybe that was just her paranoia talking again. He was a pastor, after all; but then again, that really didn’t matter. Alden Forth had been a minister too, and he killed at least eleven prostitutes in the Denver area over a period of seven years before he was finally caught. Titles didn’t make you innocent. They just gave you something to hide behind if you weren’t.
“Do you have information about these murders, or don’t you?” Constance asked.
“I told you…it’s complicated.”
“Then let’s go across the street to the sheriff’s office,” she suggested. “We can un-complicate it there.”
He didn’t seem agitated by her suggestion, but his objection was succinct. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I am here to help you, not Sheriff Carmichael.”
“In case you missed it, we’re all on the same team.”
“Perhaps, but there is no longer any hope for his soul.”
“I see,” she said with a patronizing nod. “Well, I’ve already told you my soul is just fine the way it is, so I don’t think there’s any hope for mine, either.”
“Special Agent Mandalay, please listen to me. I really think we should go back to your room at the Greenleaf now.”
“I’m confused,” she replied. “You obviously know where I’m staying. If it’s so important that we talk there, then why did you wait until I was here to contact me?”
“Because I needed to be sure.”
“About what?”
“That you were alone.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m still not following you.”
He answered with, “We should go back to your room now.”
She was no longer second-guessing herself. Considering the weird circular conversation thus far, Constance had lost any miniscule amount of faith she might have had in the possibility of an actual lead coming from him. Like the conversation, she had come back around to her original assessment that he was hitting on her, or maybe that he was just a serial confessor or conspiracy theorist. Whichever it was, she was firmly convinced that she had a nutcase on her hands.
“We really should go back to your room now,” the pastor insisted again when she didn’t reply to him immediately. This time his voice was beginning to show the first hints of agitation, and that wasn’t good. When dealing with crazy, you never knew how quickly something like that might escalate.
Constance sent her gaze on a quick roam around the diner. The closest person appeared to be six or seven stools away, down the left side of the counter. On the right, the closest was probably seven or eight away. At the moment everyone appeared to be engaged in their own conversations and not paying a bit of attention to the two of them here at the far end. That was good. There weren’t any other outside influences to antagonize him, and she had a bit of a buffer zone if things suddenly went south and he became physical. However, her hope was to defuse this before it could ever go that far. Talking down a whack job was the last thing she felt up to doing right now, but there were innocent bystanders in the diner and she was on deck, like it or not. She knew the first thing she needed to do was get him out of here and isolated, in case things fell apart and started to turn ugly.
She centered her gaze back on the man and saw that he was mimicking her scan of the room. When he finished, he sighed, then leaned in toward her, “ Yes. I see him, just as you do. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
Constance hated hearing that. It seemed like every time she dealt with someone who started spouting scripture in a literal sense, people died.
“Tell you what,” she offered. “Just let me put on my coat and we can go.”
“Yes,” he said. “That would be good.” He glanced about once again and gave a slight nod, as if to implicate everyone else in the room. Then he whispered, “And that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
“That’s from the Bible, right?” Constance asked, trying to keep him engaged so that he remained focused on her.
“Yes. Second Timothy, chapter two, verse twenty-six,” he replied.
“I’d like to hear more. Just let me get my coat and we can go.”
She kept her eyes on him while reaching back with her left hand and grasping the heavy outer garment. Without warning he reached over and clamped his own hand tightly around her right wrist and pulled, lifting her hand up toward his face.
Without even thinking Constance rotated her forearm and flexed her elbow hard inward while twisting her upper torso. Her wrist instantly snapped free between the weak point where his thumb met the tips of his fingers, and she pulled away. All of her instinct and training dictated that she should follow through and subdue the threat, but she managed to stop herself just short of bringing her left fist around and taking him to the floor. Her hand, however, was tightly clenched; arm cocked and ready to fly.
He sat motionless, his gaze following her right hand as she drew it back. He seemed transfixed by her pink polished fingernails. The look in his eyes was a queer mixture of sadness and terror.
“Too late,” he muttered, then looked up at her and raised his voice. “I’m too late. Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me! ”
This was definitely not going according to plan, but then she knew better than to have expected it to. She couldn’t help but notice that the scuffle had now caught the attention of the rest of the patrons in the diner. Conversations had stopped instantly, bringing a newfound quiet to the room. Within the scope of her peripheral vision she could see that several people were now aiming glances toward the end of the lunch counter where the two of them were sitting.
“Calm down,” Constance instructed the pastor, staying focused on him and watching for any threatening movement. “Everything is okay. Just calm down.”
He shook his head, then exclaimed, “And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.”
With that, the man turned and slowly panned his stare around the room at the rest of the people. Their faces
